Fic | rise today | h50

[siehn]

For ciaimpala, who won me in the helpthesouth fandom auction.

So, apparently I've had this almost-finished for a while and didn't remember? I don't know. Work has been making me crazy lately, what with the weird schedule and training for cake decoration.

NONETHELESS. I have it done, and posted, and I hope you enjoy it. ♥ ...Not real sure about it, but that's not news.

Additional note: I just. I have to take a minute to say thank you to everyone who reads, and/or comments on my stuff. You guys have no idea how much it means to me. Or maybe you do, I dunno, but just. Thank you. So much.



Steve’s taken on a Thursday.

Danny remembers the day with all the vivid, hyper-realistic details of someone who’s using caffeine as a means to get through each day, and hasn’t slept in a week.

Kono and Chin force him to go home, and Gracie calls every night, but Danny can’t make his brain shut up long enough to get any decent sort of sleep. He knows it’s about as fucked up as it can get when he sprawls in Steve’s bed --not ‘their’ bed, not yet, but damned if Danny’s gonna wait any longer, and he will get his partner back, if only to yell at him for getting kidnapped in the first place.

While Danny will be the first to admit he’s maybe got a few anger problems --and yeah, okay so he likes yelling at Steve, who likes getting yelled at so really, who’s the more fucked up one there?-- he finds all he really wants to do to the crazy SEAL bastard is hold on tight and never let go. He doesn’t think Steve would object. Danny’s not stupid, okay, just a little repressed and really, who hasn’t seen that him and Steven are doing everything except sleeping together?

If he’s gonna be married a second time then he’s damned well gonna get something out of it. Steve’s his, and he’s going to get him back from the mother fuckers that were stupid enough to take him in the first place, and then he’s going to prove, very thoroughly, that yes Steven, he gets it. Because okay, maybe he’s Steve’s too, and he likes that more than he should.

He sighs; lays there thinking he’s maybe too exhausted to sleep, and gives it up to roll out of the bed with a final glare at the tousled sheets that still smell like Steve.

“Fuck,” he mutters, grabs a beer he definitely doesn’t need out of the fridge --he’d put them there himself-- and heads out to the lanai to flop heavily into a deck chair and stare out at the ocean. He knows he has it bad; can’t even bring himself to stay at his own shit-hole of an apartment even though everything here reminds him of his crazy-ass partner who’s been missing for a fucking week.

Danny’s going crazy; he’s losing it.

Funny how you don’t realize the impact someone has on your life until they’re gone. Which Steve is; gone, that is.

There’d been no calls for ransom, no nothing. Steven is just gone; missing, not there anymore. A giant whole in Danny’s life that used to be filled with crazy and amusement and Steve’s big, stupid heart.

Of course Danny isn’t giving up. Neither are Chin and Kono; both of them sporting that narrow-eyed look of doom that spelled trouble for whoever had the balls to kidnap their fearless leader while they hunted down leads like two blood-hounds on the trail. Honestly, Danny feels useless even though he knows that’s fucking stupid because he’s been out hunting all week, too. He just…He wants Steven back, with his crazy and his bitching and the soft, surprised looks he gets when Gracie hugs him and calls him ‘Uncle Steve.’

“Fuck,” he says again, helplessly, angry, and stares out at the ocean because it reminds him of Steve --everything does, but this most of all-- and the rhythm of the waves rolling in is impossibly soothing to his frayed nerves.

He knows what he wants --needs-- but he’s alone in Steve’s house with only ghosts and memories for company; he leans back in the chair and closes his eyes.

“Where are you, babe?” he asks, and doesn’t know if he’s talking to a Steve that isn’t there and can’t answer, or the ocean crashing in the distance.

Either way, all he gets is silence.

He sighs, slouches, and lets the breaking waves lull him into a fitful, restless sleep.

-----------

Danny startles awake, all at once with no time to adjust because his phone is going off, loud and insistent, the tone he uses for work, and he grabs for it with all the desperation of someone waiting for news.

“Tell me,” he answers, voice scratchy and hoarse, “that you have something.”

It’s Kono on the other end, and she says the magic words, and Danny can’t breathe because finally.

“I love you, you have no idea how much, you have always been my favorite,” he tells her when he can speak again.

She laughs and her voice comes over the line, gleeful and teasing with, “whatever, brah, we all know who your favorite is, and it isn’t me.”

He rolls his eyes, knows she’ll know he did, and says, “meet me there?”

“Already on our way, Danny. We’re gonna get him back,” she answers, serious all of a sudden, and he’s so, so grateful for the conviction in her voice. It’s almost enough to let him believe they might get Steven back in one piece.

“Yeah. Thanks, rookie,” he says, and hangs up as he pushes himself out of the chair, ignores the crack and creak of bones that are really too worn to be sleeping in deck-chairs outside; it doesn’t take him long to pull the car out of the driveway and point it towards the address Kono had given him.

And if desperation maybe makes his foot a little heavy on the gas, well, he’s a cop, and it’s Steve, and even Danny’s allowed a little crazy once in awhile.

-----

It’s a house.

“It’s a house,” he says, indignant, and turns to stare at Chin and Kono. “It’s just a house!” He knows he isn’t making any sense, but he also knows they know him well enough to understand his point.

Steve’s a SEAL; Danny’s pretty sure a house isn’t going to hold him for long. At least, he had been sure, but now his mind’s turning against him, and all he can see is Steve, hurt, and too-still; not breathing.

Dead.

God, no. He shakes his head, and tightens his grip on his gun as the three of them approach the house. He can’t afford to be distracted, and he refuses to believe Steve’s anything other than alive, anyway. They have too much to do, too much going for them, for him to believe anything else.

He’d know, irrational as that thought is, but hey, if there’s one thing Danny’s never been accused of, it’s being rational about the people he loves.

And he does love Steve. That’s never been in question, and dammit, he deserves a chance to tell the crazy bastard. If he has anything to say about it, he’s going to have that chance.

“Let’s go,” he says, glancing back at Chin and Kono, his only back-up because they couldn’t chance S.W.A.T bursting in there, and they had never been able to keep things from getting personal when it came to one of their own. They were all each other needed, today, right now, to get Steve back where he belonged.

Of course, HPD is on stand-by because Danny isn’t stupid, and he realizes, distantly, that they’re probably going to need them, and an ambulance. That’s pretty much standard procedure these days, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone, anymore.

He can’t get the image of Steve sprawled on the floor in a heap, not breathing, out of his head. The silence of the place isn’t helping, either; there should be some kind of noise, somewhere, but there’s nothing, and it’s driving him crazy.

None of them are prepared for what they see when they walk in. The perps are gone; the place is empty except for Steve, sprawled on the floor with a dead man beside him, and for a long, painful moment, Danny can’t breathe.

It’s Chin who makes his way over, carefully, and kneels beside Steve to check his pulse, and announce that he’s still alive. The relief in his voice is thick, clear as day, and Danny nearly breaks right then.

“He needs a hospital--” Chin starts, but he’s interrupted when Steve groans, loud in the sudden silence, and opens his eyes. Danny doesn’t remember moving, but he’s leaning over his partner, staring down at him anxiously.

“Steven?” he asks, low and breathless, and it feels like he’s been punched in the gut when those eyes focus on him.

“Danno?” Steve’s voice is faint; he sounds confused, and Danny doesn’t want to think about all the things that are probably wrong with him right now. He just wants to focus on the fact that Steve is alive, and here, and okay.

“Yeah, babe. I’m here. We’ve got you; you’re safe,” he murmurs, not caring that Chin and Kono are right there, and the paramedics are coming up; he reaches out, has to touch, and runs his fingers through Steve’s hair gently. “Could have waited for us, though, you goof. You don’t have to do everything by yourself, you know,” he adds, glancing towards the dead man, and then back at Steve and the way he’d clearly over-extended himself in his escape attempt. He knows he’s hovering, and clinging, and being ridiculous but he can’t help it.

Steve’s his, and he has him back.

“Knew you’d come, Danno. Just got tired ‘o waitin’ and decided to meet you half-way,” Steve answers, most of the words running together as he leans into Danny’s touch. Danny makes a noise somewhere between a laugh, and a sob, and shakes his head because yeah, that’s just like his crazy-ass partner. Steve’s been meeting him half-way since the beginning, and maybe it’s Danny’s turn, now.

He steps back and watches them load Steve onto a stretcher, and then into the ambulance. He glances briefly at the scene, at Chin and Kono liaising with HPD even though Danny’s technically second-in-command; the both of them know him too well.

“Hey! Don’t think you’re getting away that easy, Steven. You and me, babe,” he calls out, jogging after the stretcher, and climbing into the ambulance, “we got a lot to talk about.”

He looks forward to that conversation, to finally pushing everything between them out there, into the open, and making a choice that isn’t a choice at all.

Steve smiles weakly, still obviously dazed, but he must read something on Danny’s face because he reaches out, and long fingers tangle together with Danny’s own, and he nods. “Sure thing, Danno,” he says, and yeah, he is, Danny knows.